Multi-Species Parties & Game Balance

[Darkholme]

Hmm. I think you guys might be onto something with a way to give this "human ingenuity" thing mechanical weight. I don't think I would want to make them unable to improve skills outside their culture/profession, but I can definitely see them being less effective at doing so or gaining less benefit from doing so.

 

But if you play an orphaned dwarf (Dwarphan!) who was raised by humans, how do you explain that? I would think such a character would be culturally inclined to think like a human. That is, unless they're genetically and intrinsically predisposed to becoming very set in a limited way of thinking, even when raised surrounded with people who are constantly innovating.

 

But this just gives you a two-tier system. It doesn't quite address the difficulties of multiple non-humans at different power levels. I think we might be on the right track, however.

[Mankcam]

I don't think having less Fate pts or less starting skill pts for non-human races would be the way to go myself...

But I think a reasonable explanation could involve presenting non-humans as ancient races, and thus quite 'jaded' by human standards

 

I think the most simple quick fix to model this for me would be to decrease the skill gain rolls for non-humans.

 

So, to use Tolkien's races as an example,  perhaps if a Man of Bree has a standard skill gain roll of 1D6, then perhaps a Dwarf from Durins Folk rolls a 1D4 instead, whereas a Sindarin Elf from Mirkwood rolls a 1D3.

 

I haven't thought this through very well, but I think I could be onto something possibly...

[MatteoN]

I think the most simple quick fix to model this for me would be to decrease the skill gain rolls for non-humans.

 

Yes, that is perhaps both the best and the easiest solution.

[Darkholme]

I think the most simple quick fix to model this for me would be to decrease the skill gain rolls for non-humans.

 

So, to use Tolkien's races as an example,  perhaps if a Man of Bree has a standard skill gain roll of 1D6, then perhaps a Dwarf from Durins Folk rolls a 1D4 instead, whereas a Sindarin Elf from Mirkwood rolls a 1D3.

 

 

Isn't that basically what I suggested last night at 6PM?

 

 

IE: If a Dwarven Blacksmith wants to increase a skill outside of "Mountain Dwarf" or outside of "blacksmith" he's doing so at decreased effectiveness (1d3 or 1d2 skill improvement roll, or something of the sort).

[MatteoN]

to use Tolkien's races as an example,  perhaps if a Man of Bree has a standard skill gain roll of 1D6, then perhaps a Dwarf from Durins Folk rolls a 1D4 instead, whereas a Sindarin Elf from Mirkwood rolls a 1D3.

On average, the total of the characteristics of the (Gloranthan?) elves from BRP is 82, 4.5 points more than standard humans (created with 3d6 in all stats except INT and SIZ). That is a small increment of a mere +4.5%, that probably by itself wouldn't justify using a different die. On the other hand, on average BRP elves have 3.5 more points in INT than humans, that influence both their starting skills (as each point of INT gives 10 personal skill points) and their experience rolls (3.5/2 rounded up gives an increment of +2% to the chance of making a successful experience roll). Now, the weight of the extra 35 skill points elves get on average varies depending on the caracters' power level: 

 

                                  avg starting skill points

                                  humans       elves

normal game             355              390 (+10%)

heroic game              430              465 (  +8%)

epic game                 505              540 (  +7%)

superheroic game     605              640 (  +6%)

 

The average elf's higher intelligence gives them an average increment of +7.75% to their skill ratings. As a quick and very dirty method one might perhaps add these three percentages (+4.5% to characteristics, +2% to experience rolls, +7.75% to skills) and modifiy by the resulting percentage (14.25%) the range of the die rolled to increase skill ratings. Since the die normally is a d6, that has a chance of 16.7% of rolling a 6, reducing the range to that of a d5 should be a MORE than adequate compensation for being an elf. [EDIT: This was awkward; probably it makes more sense to reduce the average result (3.5) of the die rolled to increase skills by the cumulative percentage (14.25%), and find out what die/dice have the resulting value (3) as the average result (d5).]

[Darkholme]

Hmm. Interesting.

 

I just ran a the totals on attributes on the non-gloranthan elves (Monsters of Legend/MRQII Monster Book) whose totals come out to 90 on average, with 3d6+6 int for an average of 3.5 higher than human int. The free starting skill points are a flat amount in Legend though, and improvement rolls work the MRQ way (you get a set number of rolls, which you can take for whatever skill you'd like, charisma/appearance increases the number of rolls you get, d100+int vs your current skill total to improve, and it goes up by 1d4+1), with a teacher you roll your skill, and on a success, you add int/5 + teacher's teaching skill/10.

 

Out of curiosity, do you actually use "roll and keep" for attributes? Or do you use the point buy, or some other method?

 

The math you mentioned covers a skill point disparity pretty well. Do you have any idea how to measure how much of a big deal extra hp or extra damage should be worth?

[MatteoN]

Hmm. Interesting.

 

I just ran a the totals on attributes on the non-gloranthan elves (Monsters of Legend/MRQII Monster Book) whose totals come out to 90 on average, with 3d6+6 int for an average of 3.5 higher than human int. The free starting skill points are a flat amount in Legend though, and improvement rolls work the MRQ way (you get a set number of rolls, which you can take for whatever skill you'd like, charisma/appearance increases the number of rolls you get, d100+int vs your current skill total to improve, and it goes up by 1d4+1), with a teacher you roll your skill, and on a success, you add int/5 + teacher's teaching skill/10.

 

The number of improvement rolls you get is irrelevant, what is important is the bonus a higher intelligence gives you per each improvement roll. If you like that kind of approach, tinkering with it to implement it in Legend should be quite easy. The bonus an elf gets from their high intelligence when learning from a teacher seems negligible (+3.5/5).

 

 

Yes. I've played a lot of point buy RPGs, but now I have more fun rolling up a character than engineering it (but I never was a min-maxer). A balanced random chargen is my holy grail. However playing a mediocre character heroically can be particularly rewarding.

 

 

 

Since HPs and DB don't affect a character's advancement, I thought it was sufficient taking into account the characteristics from which they are derived. INT is particularly important in BRP (a truly anthropocentric game) because it affects both character generation and advancement. The main problem is whether one should give APP/CHA the same weight as the other characteristics. 

[Mankcam]

Darkholme the altered experience gain concept was your suggestion, I was just throwing an example out there for how I may implement it.

Some good ideas coming out of this thread

[Darkholme]

Yes. I've played a lot of point buy RPGs, but now I have more fun rolling up a character than engineering it (but I never was a min-maxer). A balanced random chargen is my holy grail. However playing a mediocre character heroically can be particularly rewarding.

Hmm. Okay. These days my preference is typically arrays. You pass out a couple of arrays and the players choose the one they want, arrange into whatever stats they prefer, and then add racial mods.

 

In the past I've had some luck with cards as well. Basically, you take 2 cards per suit, with no cards lower than 4 or higher than 9, then you shuffle and draw pairs. As for their exact ratios, you an do 2 of each card 4-9 (with D&D's 6 stats), but that results in your average stats being a 13. But you come up with an array you find reasonable (using anydice and taking a look at what you get with the standard BRP rolls of 3d6 or 2d6+6 yields (3d6) 7 8 9 10.5 12 13 14

(2d6+6) 9 11 12 13 14 15 17 - and averaging them out with the proportions (5/2) gives you yields 8,9,10,11,13,14,15), or in cards: 4&4, 4&5, 5&5, 5&6, 6&7, 7&7, 7&8 (Total of 80). If you want higher stats or lower stats to be possible, start changing the individual cards without changing their totals. 4&4, 4&5, 5&5, 4&7, 5&8, 5&9, 6&9 gives you an unlikely chance at an 18. You could let the players pick the cards themselves so long as they stay within the 4-9 range and the cards add up to 80.

 

I understand how INT takes some extra consideration because of how it affects advancement, but I'm not clear on how you suggest measuring/dealing with the characteristic disparities.

 

App/Cha is much more useful in legend than regular BRP, from what I understand, because it affects the number of improvement rolls you get. if you have a CHA of 6 or less, you get 1 less improvement roll each time they are awarded, if it's 13-18, you get +1, 19-24 you get +2, 25-30 +3, etc.

[Darkholme]

Darkholme the altered experience gain concept was your suggestion, I was just throwing an example out there for how I may implement it.

Some good ideas coming out of this thread

Fair enough.

 

I like MatteoN's math approach. Allows you to figure out just what kind of xp progression could work for each race. Eventually (once the game has gone on long enough) this will result in the power balance switching completely in favor of the humans (or a race with bad stats that gets a higher die for skill improvement). as they will get truly monstrous skill totals.

 

Another approach, which could be done on its own or combined with MatteoN's idea on how to apply your progression rate limiting based on the idea I gave upthread.

I've toyed a little bit with the idea of having skill maximums (ignoring characteristics) as the game progresses (both overall total and individual skills), and if you use a skill improvement roll when you're at the cap, the total you get is the number of points you can shift around, rather than the amount you can improve something (but you can't lower something below its base value). You would also give out skill improvement rolls that are only for shifting points.  This would stop that advancement from getting out of hand; and would mean that the elf who has an int boost is going to hit the cap faster, and will get to shift more points around, but he'll be at a sort of plateau for a bit until the other characters have all caught up and you raise the caps. So you'd set a ceiling at the start of the campaign, and periodically raise the ceiling. Eventually, you can just leave the ceiling where it is, keeping them at the top of whatever you deem the "sweet spot" of the system to be. 

[MatteoN]

I understand how INT takes some extra consideration because of how it affects advancement, but I'm not clear on how you suggest measuring/dealing with the characteristic disparities.

I said it was a quick and very dirty method!  Since HPs and DB are derived from CON, SIZ, and STR, I just took the charactersistics into consideration. However, probably it wouldn't be hard to take all of a given creature's derived stats and bonuses into consideration and compare them to those of a average human to figure out by what percentage the range of the creature's experience die must be reduced or increased.

[Atgxtg]

 

Oh. Nono. I was not talking about legends. I said Elves don't have a weakness to iron in Legend™ by Mongoose - where they came across as Just Better.

 

 

   LOL! I took that entirely in the wrong context. I though what you meant by "in Legend" was Evles according to the legends of various cultures-not MRQ2/Legend! Oops.     :lol:Your post just made my night.

 

Okay, soda cleaned off the keyboard-let me try to get it right this time. 

 

IN MRQ/Legend elves are indeed better. There are quite a few important, but subtle differences between Mongoose's version of RQ and Chaosium's. And they can really change the way things play out. Frankly I'm not fond of varying the number of actions since it such a overwhelming advantage in a system like this. There's not much that is going to offset a character that gets twice as many attacks. 

 

Year, as mentioned MERP and RoleMaster balanced out the racial advantages of Elves by giving the other races more background points which they could spend to raise skills, attributes, acquire gold, magic items and so on, but that is not going to offset a character that gets twice as many attacks. Not for long, anyway.

 

What I think you need is some sort of perk that gets refreshed every session but I can't think of much that  is going to offset a character that gets twice as many attacks. 

[Darkholme]

Oh, I concur, regarding a free extra attack. IIRC, in RQ6, while you can still get extra turns, you get them at half the rate, so in RQ6 that same elf race is only getting a 50% head start towards a second attack (still pretty powerful boost, but not nearly as absurd).

[Questbird]

In Classic Fantasy, the closest thing to a D&D/BRP mashup we have, there are various races. I'm playing in a classic fantasy campaign where we have a party with two elves, a dwarf and a couple of humans. Classic Fantasy only gives humans the ability to increase skills faster than the other races. However, from a roleplaying point of view, our party is viewed with suspicion wherever we go because of the distrust and xenophobia between all the races in the game. There can be drawbacks to running these characters which are not necessarily reflected in stats and skills.

[Darkholme]

In Classic Fantasy, the closest thing to a D&D/BRP mashup we have, there are various races. I'm playing in a classic fantasy campaign where we have a party with two elves, a dwarf and a couple of humans. Classic Fantasy only gives humans the ability to increase skills faster than the other races. However, from a roleplaying point of view, our party is viewed with suspicion wherever we go because of the distrust and xenophobia between all the races in the game. There can be drawbacks to running these characters which are not necessarily reflected in stats and skills.

Yeah, that was mentioned upthread. Not every setting is like that though. Personally I like non-humanocentric settings, and I'm also a fan of large multicultural/multi-species metropolis focused games surrounding a variety of disparate guilds and factions and cults.

[MatteoN]

I'm sure it should be possible to streamline the method I was experimenting with above to determine what type of die a given character rolls to increase their skills. For example, one might perhaps just take into account the sum of the character's characteristics multiplied by the number of game mechanics they affect.

 

So, try this:

1) check how many mechanics are affected by each characteristic;

2) multiply each of a typical human's characteristics by the number of mechanics it affects;

3) add together all the results and take note of the sum total.

 

When creating a character (even if it's a human!), multiply each of the character's characteristics by the number of mechanics it affects (as in 2)) and add together all the results (as in 3)). Then divide the number you got in 3) by the sum total. The quotient is the number by which you have to multiply the maximum number of points the typical human adds to a skill in case of a successful experience roll, to determine what is the maximum number of skill points the given character can gain per experience roll.

[Atgxtg]

Another way to slow advancement would be to increase the number of checks/picks required to get a skill improvement. That will slow down the advancement of the more powerful characters.

 

 

I don't think any sort of hard cap is a good idea. AD&D used to do that. What happens is that the powerful characters keep their advantage until they hit the cap, and then the players grow increasingly frustrated when they are unable to advance while everyone else eventually outstrips them. What ususally happens is the the capped players will either drop out of the campaign or want to bring in new characters.

 

Instead of a hard cap, a soft one, where it gets harder to advance but still possible is, IMO, a better way to go. 

[Darkholme]

Another way to slow advancement would be to increase the number of checks/picks required to get a skill improvement. That will slow down the advancement of the more powerful characters.

Hmm. That could also work. Maybe increase the number/difficulty of checks if you're X skillpoints beyond the group average.

 

I don't think you understand what I meant, nobody would outstrip them. I'm not talking about "Elves can only go to level 12". I'm talking about "If you get to level 5 before the rest of the group, and everyone else is level 4, you can't work toward level 6 until the other players are also level 5. However, you can use your "extra xp" you earn during this time to reshuffle some stuff." If they want a new character, such a new character would get brought in at the Party Average skill point total, though, and as such they'd be taking a setback in their overall skill total.

 

Maybe. Personally I would prefer a period of getting to rejigger my skills (raise one at the expense of lowering another by the same amount) to a period where they are twice as hard to raise (or harder). You could give them both options though. Have them make an improvement roll to see how much something can go up, and then another roll to see how much of that you have to take from another skill? (+d6 -d6)

[MatteoN]

Another way to slow advancement would be to increase the number of checks/picks required to get a skill improvement. That will slow down the advancement of the more powerful characters.

If you find some merit in the idea of figuring the percentage by which a starting character is superior or inferior to the standard starting human character, and using that percentage to modify (respectively, disadvantageously or advantageously) the amount of skill points the character gains on a sucessful experience roll (or, perhaps even better, the experience roll itself!), I'd be very interested in knowing how you would develop it.

[Chorpa]

I recall that the old MERP game handled this by giving humans more background points on average than most races, especially elves (who tended to have the fewest, being tied to Fate and all ... ).  These points could be spent on all sorts of things: stat bonuses, extra skill points, extra cash, etc.  It'd probably be easy to come up with something like that for BRP.

 

The system still exists in Rolemaster today. I never thought about it but you probably could get RMFRP Character Law and adapt it for BRP type games. The whole book is dedicated to exactly what you mentioned but way more expanded than the bare bones you found in old MERP. 

[Darkholme]

I'm pretty familiar with RM. It has some good points to it, but it feels very dated and clunky in some ways to me (whereas d100 doesn't feel like that) - and I really hate character creation and advancement in the system.

[Chaot]

Most of my games tend to be human centric, however there is often a wide range of 'power level' amongst the PCs.  If we break down the system like this, Stats, Skills, Special Abilities.  These are the  three mechanical aspects that we can adjust to make everybody happy.

 

In general, I think Skills are more helpful than Stats.  Special Abilities is a wild card and can range from minor to insanely powerful (think Fate point to Demon Weapon range).  We could sit down and try to balance these out so that all is equal, but for me that way lies madness.  Instead I think it's more important to gauge whether the imbalance bothers the Players.  If it does, something needs to be adjusted.

 

My rules are 1) don't punish fun and 2) figure out what the Player wants their ideal character to be.  When you identify specific problems, make the changes that you need to so that everyone is happy.

 

So, say you've got a combat monster.  This isn't bad by itself.  It can be fun to have a bruiser or two on a team with folks who don't pack as big of a punch.  The key is to make sure that the others can do something.  When you run your scene, make sure there's a range of things that need to get done.  Stagger your opponent's effectiveness.  Build in secondary and tertiary objectives.

 

If this doesn't work, sit with the Players and ask how they want to tweak the characters.  One of BRP's strengths is it's flexibility.  If the PCs agree that one or two members are underpowered in some way, tie in a special ability or two.  This could be as simple as giving a character extra Fate points or it could mean setting up some power system, magic or special items.

 

I think that players start talking about game balance because they feel their in game actions are being overshadowed by others.

[Darkholme]

Absolutely Chaot.

 

Sometimes game imbalances can be addressed simply by tailoring your adventures to your group.

 

And you are absolutely correct regarding the sort of balance that matters being "player feels overshadowed by the other player's characters", or occasionally the very awkward "player's are getting frustrated and feel that a poorly built character can't pull their own weight and is dragging down the rest of the group".

 

IME though, if you have a selection of races that are at roughly the same baseline power level, that can help reduce the situations where that comes up. Particularly in a metropolitan or otherwise omniracial party composition. If your party consists of a human, an elf, a satyr, a lizard-man, and an orc, you don't want to step out of the gate with a wide power difference already present. Ideally you could build a human character who is close enough in usefulness to each of the other characters that they don't feel significantly overshadowed. And if you can figure out approximately how much they'll be overshadowed (before they pick their skill options) you can then use that to form the basis of "how  much should I compensate so the group's enjoyment doesn't suffer for it".

[auyl]

Rather then take away from the stats and try to counterbalance things with additional points I'm going to say something a guy I've looked up to as a mentor and long time Game Master gave as advice once. If the players want to throw off your campaign with over-powered characters then use common sense and bring "consequences" against them. For instance, one of them wants to play an elf? Then the human settlements you're in may not look kindly on elves which could mean that the elf PC could potential deal with a lot of problems, if not being attacked in the streets if they're not careful.

 

Give out roleplaying consequences that the players may not even realize at the time could spell a LOT of trouble for their character. At times we're too often thinking along the lines of D&D and the various d20 lines where everything must be "balanced" on the sheet to make sense. Why does the sheet have to be balanced? What about those bandits that are stalking your party to kill your elf and dwarf team members? They could be dead if they're not careful. That guy wearing too much armour? The orcs seem to think that he would be the most fun to take down so is attacked from every side because of it.

 

Consequences my friends, roleplay them out. Make the players really THINK about their choices at character creation and what it could mean later.

[Darkholme]

And that works fine, when you're wanting to encourage the players to play basic humans.

 

What about when *I* as the GM, want to run a game with (5-30) different species/races interacting on a daily level, and would like to allow the players to easily play as one of those species without it causing hurt feelings or vast mechanical imbalances?

 

Your approach is "figure out how much to punish the player for wanting to play something different, because the game designers in this case made different just be better". Apparently I seem to be the only one to routinely want half a dozen or more playable races. It's not that weird for me to run a game in a homebrew setting with several races of varying size and different special abilities; none of which are human.

 

I remember a game I was running using a custom system, back before I backed everything up to the cloud, and before having my apartment robbed, including the laptop and backup harddrive. The game was Iron age, in a Jungle, with tribal magics and stuff. Playable races included two or three varieties of 5-6 foot tall catfolk, 3 or 4 varying sizes of plant people, and 2 or 3 8-12 foot tall troll-ogre things, Genocidal Deer-based Elves (think Magic the Gathering: Lorwyn, if you're familiar), as well as 3-4 foot tall rodent people. It was tricky, but they all had their stuff that they were good at. I really enjoy a good sprawling metropolis in a multiracial cosmopolitan nation as a setting - focused around guilds and skullduggery, some pulp, and maybe some intrigue/investigation. Needless to say, I don't want to punish players for making characters that make sense in the setting I provided to them.

 

Not to mention, I don't want to change my setting like that (I likely spent time building it) because of overpowered races in the game - I'd rather come up with a selection of not-overpowered races, or figure out how to mechanically offset the power gap so there isn't one, or so it's close enough that players aren't being overshadowed.